Today I finished the second-to-last big missing peice for tor hidden service
remotes. Networks of these remotes are P2P networks, and there needs to be
a way for peers to find one-another, and to authenticate with one-another.
The git annex p2p command sets up links between peers in such a network.
So far it has only a basic interface that sets up a one way link between
two peers. In the first repository, run git annex p2p --gen-address.
That outputs a long address. In the second repository, run
git annex p2p --link peer1, and paste the address into it. That sets up a
git remote named "peer1" that connects back to the first repository over tor.
That is a one-directional link, while a bi-directional link would be much more convenient to have between peers. Worse, the address can be reused by anyone who sees it, to link into the repository. And, the address is far too long to communicate in any way except for pasting it.
So I want to improve that later. What I'd really like to have is an interface that displays a one-time-use phrase of five to ten words, that can be read over the phone or across the room. Exchange phrases with a friend, and get your repositories securely linked together with tor.
But, git annex p2p is good enough for now. I can move on to the final
keystone of the tor support, which is file transfer over tor.
That should, fingers crossed, be relatively easy, and the tor branch is
close to mergeable now.
Today's work was sponsored by Riku Voipio.
I already mentionned the project in telehash, but magic-wormhole does exactly that:
Receiver:
While that example shows a file transfer, arbitrary data can be transfered this way. There's a documented protocol, and it's not completely peer-to-peer: there are relay servers to deal with NAT'd machines. But the PAKE protocol (basically SPAKE2) could be a good inspiration here.
Otherwise, I must say that, as a user, I don't mind copy-pasting a hidden service string (if that's what it's about): i can do that over a secure medium (email + OpenPGP or IM + OTR) easily... But I understand it can be difficult to do for new users.